find.md

find

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Exec

Format: -exec <command> <terminator>

• {}: Is replaced by the current file name being processed. It doesn't have to be quoted ("{}").
• \;: As ; has a meaning for the shell, it must be escaped for find to get it.

\; vs. +:

• With ;, the command is executed on each matched item.

  Command: find . -type f -exec echo {} \; | wc -l
  Similar to: echo 1; echo 2; echo 3
  Result: 3

• With +, the command is executed once with the list of all the matched items.

  Command: find . -type f -exec echo {} + | wc -l
  Similar to: echo 1 2 3
  Result: 1

Regex

find . -regextype posix-extended -regex "<regex>"

Find & delete

find . -name ".DS_Store" -delete
find . -type d -name "foo" -exec rm -fr {} +

Find & delete in max 2 sub-directories

find . -maxdepth 2 -name ".git*" -exec rm -rf {} \;

Another find & delete

find . -name "Icon?" -print0 | xargs -0 rm

Find broken symlinks

find -L . -type l

Find & replace in place

find . -type f -name "*.py" -exec sed -i 's/find/replace/g' {} \;